Tagged With leds

Consider the humble light globe. It hides in your ceiling, turning electricity into light, but little do you know how inefficiently it's doing that. Halogen light bulbs aren't great, but traditional incandescents are downright terrible. Ikea says that the average Aussie household could save nearly $150 a year by switching its lighting to LEDs.

Can't decide what colour Lexus to get? With the company's one-of-a-kind LIT IS sedan, you can choose a different colour, design and even animation every morning as you head off to work. Instead of paint, the vehicle is covered in 41,999 programmable LEDs, turning it into a giant, rolling display.

Nothing classes up a room like a massive, intricate chandelier hanging overhead. But they can be a hassle to find, hard to get home, and complicated to install without tearing a hole in your ceiling. Unless the words "some assembly required" don't frighten you, in which case this flat-packed faux chandelier is a much easier alternative.

Video: The hefty, eight-armed Freefly Alta drone is capable of carrying a lot of weight. So in addition to a camera, the folks at YouTube's rctestflight channel put 1000-watts of LEDs on board, and a smoke machine, unintentionally creating the perfect way to fake an alien encounter or a UFO abduction.

The Philips Hue system is one of the few smart home solutions that work as well as you need them to, having been around for quite a few years now. But if you don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on the requisite wireless hub and colour-changing bulbs, Philips now has a cheaper alternative with its new SceneSwitch LED bulbs that don't require any additional hardware.

Poking at your smartphone before bed makes it harder to fall asleep because the cool, bluish glow of its screen tricks your body think it's daytime. Warmer tones are the key to drifting off, so Philips is introducing a new white bulb to its Hue line that can be adjusted from cool to warm colour temperatures to help your body wind down at night.

You might think that an invisible business card is a terrible idea; how could anyone see your contact details? But artist Ghizlan el Glaoui's card is a one-of-a-kind design that reveals all her important details with a glowing LED integrated into one corner.

GE just announced that it no longer make or sell compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) lightbulbs in the US. The company will wind down the manufacturing of CFL bulbs over the course of the years, and it will begin to shift its focus on making the newest and most energy-efficient lightbulbs — LEDs.

Say what you will about how comfortable a hammock is for sleeping, Eagles Nest Outfitters is working to make them just a bit more hospitable with its new DoubleNest LED that incorporates a string of glowing lights so you can read, adjust your sleeping bag, or easily find your way back after a bathroom break.

ThinkGeek has made a very strong case to put a clock on your desk, even though everything from your smartphone to your laptop already has one built-in. It's packed 60 colour-changing LEDs into a spinning rainbow that makes every gruelling conference call feel like a rave.

One of the most effective ways to protect your home while you're travelling is to simply make it look like you're not actually away. But instead of wrangling timers, or having the neighbours stop by, these new BeON smart bulbs will automatically learn your daily routines and keep turning lights on and off in your absence.

At some point in their life everyone has to grow up, and the same goes for Philips' flexible Hue Lightstrips. Once the perfect way to subtly turn your living room into a colourful rave, the LED strips can now be tuned to generate more natural white light for reading the paper, or just relaxing with some knitting.

Lining up a USB cable with the tiny charging port on your phone is hard enough during the day. At night it might as well be a MENSA test that you'll always fail. But what if the business end of your USB cable glowed like a beacon in the night when touched? Now you see why it's time to upgrade.

Even a seasoned race fan can have a hard time knowing what position every single car on a track is in. So starting this past weekend the Verizon IndyCar Series introduced giant LED numbers on every car indicating its current race position, and other metrics fans might be interested in.

When the ultimate weapon in the galaxy — even one that's far, far away — is casting a soft glow on your slumbers, how could you possible have a bad night's sleep? A Death Star night light will not only keep the Rebellion out of your dreams, but also the bogie man and that monster living under your bed.

At this point, there are heaps of apps that let us know when our trains are running late. But apps aren't nearly as pretty as an LED light strip set up to blink when something's wrong with your commute.

Philips' Hue line of bulbs and other smartphone-controlled lighting accessories have been some of the more popular and successful home automation products of the past few years. They're easy to setup, easy to customise, and now easy to use anywhere you need thanks to the new Philips Hue Go — which is powered by a rechargeable battery.